


these streets will make you feel brand new

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Men in Black (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Constipation, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Post-Men in Black 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-08 04:19:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8830240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “We’re gonna talk about this, you know,” he said. “Don’t think we’re not.”Kay fished his sunglasses from the inside pocket of his suit and slipped them onto his face, an inscrutable mask descending right along with them. He didn’t answer, of course, merely unlocked the car doors and folded down into the driver’s seat.“I saved your ass, Kay!” He ducked for the passenger’s seat just a little too fast and nearly hit his head on the frame. “You owe me.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [government_stooge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/government_stooge/gifts).



> Title from "Empire State of Mind, Pt. II (Broken Down)" by Alicia Keys.

“So,” Jay said, hooking his foot into the stool next to Kay’s and flopping against the counter, upper body taking up almost the full width of the sparkling Formica. “Are we gonna talk about this or are you just gonna keep—” Jay scowled and furrowed his eyebrows, let his eyes narrow and his nostrils flare just a little. “—looking like that? Because I’m telling you right now, it’s not doing your face any favors.” 

“Talk about what?” Kay answered. His fingers looped through his coffee cup’s white porcelain handle. The steam curled in the air, twining this way and that like so much ribbon unspooling, dissipating as quickly as Kay’s memory apparently.

“The keeping secrets about the past thing,” Jay said, because Jay was tired of fooling around and Jay wanted an answer now more than he’d wanted to not know the truth before. “That’s a long damned time to hold onto it, man.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Slick. We already talked about this.” He tapped the side of his cup in illustration. “And I’ve got breakfast to finish.”

“No, you don’t,” Jay answered, fingers pinching the edge of the equally white and porcelain plate. The underside scraped across the smooth surface beneath it, but nobody except Leonard saw fit to do so much as frown in Jay’s direction. Lifting his hand in apologetic acknowledgment, he mouthed _sorry, Len_ at the only man who spent more time in this joint than Kay. “ _I’ve_ got breakfast to finish. You need to stop eating so much bacon. Maybe cut back on the coffee, too. Your heart’s probably just a solid ball of cholesterol at this point and that can’t be good for you, what with all that caffeine pumping through your veins and all.” He shoveled a forkful of the fluffy, uniformly yellow eggs Kay ordered into his mouth and swallowed quickly. “Just so you know, I’m not up-to-date on my CPR training.”

Kay pushed himself to his feet, swallowed the last of his coffee, and clapped his hand on Jay’s shoulder, his fingernails digging hard into the skin just under his clavicle, his thumb pressed against the joint. “Eggs are dry anyway.”

It wasn’t quite Kay dragging Jay away forcibly by the arm, but it accomplished the same thing: Jay sliding off the stool, Jay following Kay back to the car, Jay wishing Kay hadn’t immediately let go the minute he knew Jay was coming.

“We’re gonna talk about this, you know,” he said. “Don’t think we’re not.”

Kay fished his sunglasses from the inside pocket of his suit and slipped them onto his face, an inscrutable mask descending right along with them. He didn’t answer, of course, merely unlocked the car doors and folded down into the driver’s seat.

“I saved your ass, Kay!” He ducked for the passenger’s seat just a little too fast and nearly hit his head on the frame. “You owe me.”

Kay, still ignoring him, shoved the key into the ignition. “You done yet?” he asked finally, because he was an asshole and that’s just what he did.

“No, I still got—!”

The squeal of the tires might have drowned out the sound of Jay’s yelling, but that didn’t stop Jay from promising himself he _would_ get a damned answer out of Kay. Even if it killed him. Even if it killed _Kay_. Okay, maybe not that, but: answers. He wanted them.

He didn’t get them. Not this time anyway.

And here he’d thought they were past Kay’s surliness.

*

“You know what I love about you, Kay?” Jay asked, pushing his pen across his desk, cheek resting on his fist.

“No.” Kay tapped at his computer, pecking with painful, deliberate slowness at the keyboard. Jay had to stomp down the urge to march over there and take over for him even though he wasn’t much better at typing than Kay. Why Kay wouldn’t switch over to one of the white plastic, egg-shaped hunks of tech from wherever-the-hell it came from that Apple would kill to have, Jay didn’t know. There was way, way less typing involved. “And I’m not interested.”

“That,” Jay said, pen fanning toward the edge of the desk at the behest of his fingertip. Losing interest, Jay turned his full attention to Kay, willing himself to not warm at the look of grumpy concentration on his partner’s face. “Is what I love about you. That right there. Your utter contempt for the people around you. It’s charming is what it is.”

Kay’s eyebrow hiked up his forehead, looking for all the world like it was this close to hitching a ride straight to hell or Alpha Centauri or wherever it was Kay would find more palatable than this place and this time. “Can we not?” he said, almost sing-songing the words, if dragging out his vowels in a distracted, annoyed way counted as singing. And the song wasn’t exactly _pleasant_ admittedly—Kay couldn’t sing worth a damn even when it was an actual song in question—but Jay liked it anyway.

Not that he would say as much. He had standards after all. And admitting that to Kay fell beneath those standards. Somewhere above his willingness to admit to that misunderstanding between him and the Taladorian ambassador and far, far below telling Kay the truth, the real, actual truth.

“What else is there to do?” Jay asked.

Kay lifted his head, glaring at Jay from over the computer monitor. Jay couldn’t see his mouth, but he imagined there was a deep, grooved frown of disapproval on it. “You could finish your paperwork.”

“Already done.” Plucking up the pen, rolling it between his palms, he flung the thing at Kay’s desk. It clattered harmlessly to the floor at Kay’s feet. “Not all of us are slow as hell at doing our job.”

“Then you can do my paperwork, Junior.” Kay’s desk creaked as he pushed himself to his feet, the oak slab solid and dependable, but older probably than Jay, Kay, and half of the rest of the alphabet put together. How he’d convinced Oh to let him have it, Jay hadn’t figured out yet. He still wasn’t entirely sure how they’d rated their own office. Suffice it to say, it was there and it would probably survive the apocalypse if one day they didn’t do their job right and found themselves facing one. “I’m gonna get some coffee.”

“Yeah, that sounds good, Kay. I’ll get right on that.” Flipping the bird at Kay’s back probably wasn’t the most mature thing he could do under the circumstances, but it felt nice, too.

Kay poked his head back into the office. “You want anything?”

“Sure, yeah.” Jay nodded. “Some recognition and a raise would be nice.” He was maybe, _maybe_ still bitter that there was shit Kay and Oh were willing to keep from him even though he’d been here for fourteen-going-on-fifteen years. That was longer than he’d stayed _anywhere_. He deserved something out of the deal. A little respect first and foremost

Kay’s head tilted down like he was wearing bifocals and needed to adjust his sight line to see correctly, but he wasn’t. The only thing he needed to adjust was just how unimpressed he was, Jay guessed. “How about something I _can_ actually get you?”

“That’s harsh.” Getting to his feet, Jay shook his head, feigning sadness and regret. “What if I said a little recognition from you is all I need? Could you give me that?”

Jay had to give it to Kay: he looked more like stone than some of the granite he kicked at on the street outside when he was bored and waiting for Kay to bring the car around. “I don’t think so.”

“Fine.” He threw up his hands and dropped into Kay’s chair—far superior, Jay noted, to his own, both cushy and supportive and like sitting on a cloud where Jay’s was about five minutes from collapsing under its own weight. “How about, like, twelve of those donut holes Ef pretends he isn’t hiding in the back of the cupboard downstairs?”

Kay tilted his head. “All right.” Then he nodded. “I can do that.”

“You’re a good person, Kay!” Jay yelled after him as he disappeared into the hallway. “Somewhere deep down inside where no one can see it.” Groaning, he grabbed the mouse and whipped it violently back and forth across the old ass mouse pad, the trackball catching on the loose, synthetic fibers that were supposed to be there to make moving the thing easier. Jay couldn’t feel too angry at it though; it was clearly defeated, curling in around the edges, and should’ve probably been retired about a hundred years ago when mice with trackballs were still relevant. “You ever hear of optical mice at least?” Situating the mouse, he poked around the desktop for a minute and refused to feel sad at the emptiness of the screen, the only icon there the recycle bin, the background a half-hearted gray tone.

Of course, Kay hadn’t bothered to tell him he was nearly finished with his paperwork when he left, but Jay’s stomach weaved its way around his abdomen anyway as a persistent moth settled in his chest, beating its wings hard against his rib cage. Correcting a spelling mistake, he hit send on the whole thing and leaned back, letting himself bask in the moment, his hands lacing behind his head. Not only was Kay a good person deep down inside, he was a soft touch, too. “Love you, too, Kay.”

*

Jay groaned and woke with a start, his back aching, a twinge in his neck that felt like it could paralyze him if he moved the wrong way. “Ow.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “What the hell?”

His breath condensed, cloud-like, in the air in front of him, catching the light from the weak, sodium yellow of the streetlamp outside the window. It reminded him of where he was and what he was doing. The dreaded stakeout. Couldn’t escape it even when you joined a secret government organization that operated outside the law. “Why’d you let me fall asleep?” he asked, aggrieved, chafing his hands together. Opening his mouth wide, he huffed warm air onto his palms.

“Did you know you drool?” Kay asked, glancing sidelong at him. His mouth formed a vaguely disapproving slash across the lower half of his face, tilting down lower at one corner, dropping a shadow onto his jaw.

“I—” Even though Jay felt the telltale itch of dried saliva on the corner of his mouth, he refused to rub at his chin to confirm it. “Hell no, I don’t drool. You must be confusing me with someone else.”

Kay’s eyes fell to Jay’s mouth, gaze lingering briefly before slipping away. “Suit yourself.”

“Spot anything yet?”

“Three UFOs and a meteor,” Kay said. “Already identified the UFOs though. Nobody we need to worry about.”

“So what you’re saying is now’s the perfect time for that heart-to-heart you keep ducking.”

“Now’s the perfect time for you to give up on that idea entirely.” Kay’s jaw clenched and he leaned forward to peer out of the windshield, his breath fogging the glass even more than the late night chill and their presence already has. “And there’s number four.” He whistled and shook his head. “Sure are a lot of flyers out tonight.”

“You need a better hobby.” Drumming his fingers against the dash, Jay tapped his feet against the floorboards. “Seriously, why can’t you just—”

“Look alive, kid,” he said, pointing up, his fingertip leaving a streak behind it. “Eyes sharp.”

“You’re just trotting out way more of the nicknames than usual because you’re mad at me, right?” He gestured between himself and Kay, as though that somehow illustrated his point. “Because I know you know I’m a grown man.”

Jay didn’t expect an answer, which was good because it meant he wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t get one. Sometimes Jay was pretty sure it’d be easier to get a response out of a brick wall. And sometimes, he thought a brick wall would make a better partner.

“Do we even need to be here?” Jay finally asked, scrubbing his hands over his biceps. “I thought we were watching for a Fillothean with a nasty habit of—”

“We are,” Kay answered—a little too quickly to be anything other than suspect, but Jay couldn’t figure out just why or how and chose to let it go instead of pursuing it further. Stake outs were tiring work after all and it was already awkward as hell to keep getting rejected this way. “Haven’t seen him yet.”

 _Fine, Kay_ , he thought, angry at himself for giving in yet again. _Have it your way_.

*

Pain ripped through Jay’s abdomen, spasms raking across the muscles and of his stomach and diaphragm and spreading up his chest and down his arms. Bent nearly in half, hands braced against his knees, he gasped and tried—tried to…

“Kay.” His voice came out as a ragged whisper, low, drowned out by the chaotic din of screaming and running tourists and bystanders. And Kay was too busy chasing after the asshole trying to ruin everyone’s day to hear anyway. For an old guy, he could still run pretty fast. Not that he’d ever tell Kay as much.

There was no way in hell Jay was gonna be able to follow him this time.

Jay tried not to regret that fact. You’d think he’d forgive himself for it since he was dying and all, his heart constricting in a way that just wasn’t normal, but you’d be wrong.

You’d be very, very wrong.

*

“Time to wake up.”

He heard the voice through a thick veneer of—something. Like his ears were plugged up with cotton balls or wax or that gunk Xaxxiltrithaleens’ll spit at you when they’re mad. Jay supposed it _would_ be hard to hear on the opposite side of the veil of death, so maybe that explained it. It was as good an answer as he was likely to get anyway.

“Wake up, Jay. I won’t ask twice.”

Jay coughed, razor blades slicing at the inside of his throat. “What the hell kind of afterlife is this?” he said—or tried to. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded.

Cool, dry fingers pressed at his cheek and down his jaw to settle against his neck. At least Jay hoped they were fingers. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that they were something else entirely, but Jay didn’t want to think about that.

“You’re not dead,” Kay said, fierce, sounding highly disgruntled by that fact. “You’re just lying in a puddle on 42nd.”

“That’s _not_ hell?” Jay asked, struggling upright, his eyes gummy and bleary as he opened them. Wincing, he blinked up at Kay, surprised when Kay’s arm wound around his back, his other hand wrapping around Jay’s elbow. He ached. Everywhere. Which… was an improvement over the mind-searingly acute experience of earlier, but still not high on Jay’s list of ideal situations to be in. He couldn’t even appreciate how close Kay was, his touch lingering in a way Jay didn’t remember it ever doing so before. That was how shitty he felt. “Ugh.”

“Deep breaths.” Kay rubbed circles into his back. As far as Jay could tell, they weren’t doing anything to ease the agonizing remnants of his encounter with—whatever it was that took him down. But that didn’t stop Jay from trying to enjoy it anyway. “Just give it a minute. You’ll feel better.”

“What happened?”

“Lightning strike,” Kay said. “The closest you’re likely to feel anyway. Lemurian stunner charge. It’ll get you every time.”

“Lemurians aren’t real.”

“Some punks from Plissa XIV liked the sound of it.” Shrugging, Kay shifted back onto his heels. “Luckily, it doesn’t do lasting damage.”

Jay opened his mouth to argue that point, but he had to admit: he was feeling better. In fact, he was feeling fine. His vision still swam a little, but the ache was receding, replaced by a comparative sense of well-being. He was alive! A puddle on 42nd wasn’t hell! Life was good!

“There we go,” Kay said, a not-quite smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Let’s get you up.”

“I got it,” Jay said, pushing himself to his feet. He held out his hand for Kay to take, eager to feel the slide of Kay’s palm against his. And it didn’t disappoint when it happened, though maybe Kay’s skin was a little clammier than he was used to. “Thanks, Kay.”

“Yeah, well.” Kay grunted, his knees popping audibly as he got to his feet. “Just don’t do that again. Chasing down Plissans in the middle of the busiest part of the day isn’t my idea of a good time.”

“Next time, I’ll let them hit you instead,” Jay said consolingly. He wouldn’t really, but Kay didn’t need to know that. If there was any way to stop Kay from getting shot at, Jay was taking it, and Kay didn’t need to know that either. “I run faster than you anyway.”

*

Jay didn’t drink much anymore. Not that he was a big drinker before—always too busy busting bad guys to do much more than grab a beer with the rest of the squad and maybe catch a game at the only bar everyone could agree was acceptable, a little joint down from the precinct where they seemed to be the only customers—but it had only grown more true in the years since he traded it all away for a black suit and sunglasses. Some of it was simply that everyone around him was _way_ too weird to sit down and have a drink with. And some of it was just… when you’re dealing with aliens. From another planet. On a daily basis. While everyone else goes about their business like there weren’t aliens _everywhere_. Where did you draw the line? And at what point did you become the local crank, drunk out of his mind, telling stories about flying saucers to anyone who would listen?

So yeah. Not a whole lot of drinking going on.

He rubbed his fingertips together, the smooth skin still occasionally a surprise to him. Even after all these years, he sometimes forgot he no longer had fingerprints, an identity, a life as normal as anyone else’s.

He sipped from a glass of whiskey—his third, a gift from Kay one year, for making it through the year prior, if Jay remembered the occasion correctly—and stared at the wall of his apartment, bare and getting a little grungy, a few cobwebs clinging to the ceiling. He probably should do something about that since he was here and all.

He didn’t make it back home a lot these days.

But it didn’t seem a whole lot like home anyway. The office felt more homelike than this.

That was… sad.

Downing the rest of his drink, he slumped even further into his couch cushion and, setting the glass further down on said cushion, he closed his eyes, head tilting back. He could play a video game, but even that didn’t appeal to him right now.

Floating on the pleasant haze of his buzz, he let his mind wander to the strange turns his life had taken, to the situations he kept finding himself in, to Kay.

Kay. The biggest pain in the ass he’d ever come across.

And the only thing in his life he couldn’t imagine living without.

The only thing in his life that could probably easily imagine living without him.

*

“What’s your problem now, hoss?” Kay didn’t take his eyes off the road, which was good because Jay wasn’t sure his heart could take it if Kay wasn’t. Didn’t matter that they’d been together fourteen years—as selfish as it was, he like to forget about how Kay had given it up, gotten out, was happy, and had been drawn back in—Jay was never going to get used to how he drove.

“Nothing,” Jay said, a prickle of annoyance creeping down his spine. He tried to stretch it out, rolling his shoulders, but it did him no good. “Do I look like I gotta problem? No. I’m just minding my business while you drive like a lunatic.”

“You’re staring.”

“I’m really not.” He tried to pretend his voice hadn’t reached for and obtained a shriek-y quality he didn’t like one bit, but it was impossible to not notice if he was being entirely honest. but though it was a close thing, at least he didn’t grip the door handle. That was something to be proud of.

“You are. I don’t even have to look at you to know it.” His jaw clenched, muscles shifting by minute degrees. “If you’ve got something to say, you should just say it.”

The problem was Jay had all sorts of things to say. So many that he couldn’t find the words to voice any of them. And none of them were all that worth saying—too much trouble, not enough payoff. No, it was Kay that needed to do some speaking, but Jay didn’t know how to make it happen. His only experience with a talkative Kay was forty years in the past. And even now that Jay knows what happened to make Kay Kay, it hadn’t changed anything about this Kay’s taciturn speech patterns now.

Kay was still Kay.

And Jay should take a page out of his book.

He stared out the window at the quickly passing sidewalks, shop windows, and people outside. They all got to go about their business like nothing was wrong. Jay envied them that. Or, he envied the version of them he imagined existed. He had enough problems of his own; he didn’t want to imagine theirs, too.

“You don’t make a very good me,” Kay said, fingers tapping out a cowboy-tinged rhythm against the steering wheel. How Jay could tell it was one of the terrible, terrible old country songs Kay liked to listen to, Jay didn’t want to think about. It was bad enough that he knew. “I can hear you fuming from all the way over here. You gotta relax a little.”

Jay barked a laugh. “You’re wasted as a humorless government agent, Kay. Let me tell you.”

Kay’s lips firmed and compressed and he shook his head. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” Jay’s hand scrubbed over his mouth and beneath his nose. “You’re a regular comedian. Probably could’ve made millions at it.”

Kay’s hand drifted from the wheel to the turn signal, clicking it on. Turning his head, he glanced out the back window and changed lanes, sliding into a bit of street parking that was reserved for delivery vans and trucks and not what looked nominally like a normal car.

Flashing the hazards, Kay shifted in his seat, a little awkward and stiff, his arm resting against the steering column. “Spill,” he said. “You’ve been surly for weeks now.”

“Surly? Me. _I’m surly_.” Jay’s finger flicked in the air between them, back and forth. “Me? You sure you know where you are? I’m not surly.”

When Kay wasn’t stony-faced, his features took on a hangdog quality. So now he was looking at Jay all hangdog except for the high arching eyebrow climbing his forehead. He glanced down at Jay’s chest, where Jay’s arms were crossed.

Jay immediately uncrossed them. “Okay, fine. Maybe I’m surly.”

With an almost mocking degree of interest, Kay said, “Do you want to talk about it, Slick?”

Whether it was the way Kay sounded or simply because of what he’d said, Jay felt something inside of him snap, every emotion breaking through and leaving him with no brain-to-mouth filter. It was like he was someone else all of a sudden, like everything he hadn’t let himself think was rattling at his ribcage. “Yeah. You know what?” he said. “Yeah, I do.”

Kay gestured. _By all means_.

Jay fought the urge to bat Kay’s hand out of the space between them, the faux benevolence of it annoying him to an even greater degree than usual. Kay didn’t really want to know; he just wanted to get this situation resolved so he wouldn’t be inconvenienced by it anymore.

Well, sorry. Jay was going to inconvenience him. He’d _always_ inconvenienced him.

It was just going to be especially inconvenient for him now.

“I’ve spent weeks— _weeks_ —no, if you count before the whole Boris thing, then _months_ around your moody ass. And you never said anything, never told me why. Even though you knew what was going to happen. You knew I was going back. And you’ve been sitting on that for forty goddamned years.” Jay tugged fiercely at his seatbelt, stifled by its weight against his chest, and fumbled at the buckle. Then he turned slightly, hiking his knee up as best he could. “And you won’t even _talk_ to me about it. You’re acting like it never happened. And all I’m thinking is, ‘you know, young Kay? That guy seemed happy,’ and I’m—”

Jay’s brain finally caught up with him and he firmly shut his mouth, twisting away again.

“I really am the reason you’re not that guy anymore. And not even in a vague, ‘oh, that Jay, always a thorn in my side, trying to be my friend and all that, how annoying’ way. But in a real, actual, ‘I’ve got issues because Jay got himself caught up in some shit’ way. And the hell of it is, that stuff is in the past now. Again. And I can’t fix any of it. Even though I tried. And it _sucks_ , man. Knowing that? It sucks.” He drew in a deep breath, trying to figure out what he should say next.

“You done?”

Jay wasn’t given to seeing literal red, but if there was ever a time that he would, it was right now. He almost couldn’t breathe with the fury sitting in his throat, constricting his lungs, pushing its way out from behind his teeth. “No, you prick. I’m _in love_ with you and you’re a miserable bastard because of me! I'm not done!”

Oh.

 _Shit_.

If Jay could smother himself with his palm, he would have. As it was, he still gave it his best shot. “Just—” His voice was muffled by his hand. “Pretend you didn’t hear that.” Remembering he was an MiB agent, he fished in his pocket. His fingers shook so hard he couldn’t get a good grip on his neutralizer and anyway, his hand got caught in a steel vice, but it was the effort that counted.

A warm steel vice admittedly. So maybe it wasn’t actually steel.

Kay’s hand.

“Are you done?”

“No,” Jay said, now making himself miserable. No wonder Kay was never impressed with him. “I’m just gonna flashy thing myself if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind actually.”

Kay’s seat squeaked as he shifted, his hand pulling Jay to the side, too.

“You want know why me and Oh didn’t work?”

Momentarily distracted by the question, Jay furrowed his brow. “The rules against fraternization?”

He didn’t dare look at Kay, but he could almost hear his eyes rolling on his head. “Yes, there was that.” Out of his peripheral vision, Jay saw Kay scratch at his ear. “We tried once. And for a while, we were happy. It was… fun.”

Interested despite himself, Jay asked, “Fun? _You_?” He didn’t want to be interested really, but he also knew he was never going to get another chance like this. He could just find a hole to bury himself in later. Kay merely stared at him instead of answering. “Fine. So you and Oh.”

“Me and Oh.” Kay peered out the window, squinting. “We might have made it work—” Kay drew in a deep breath. “—we might have made it work if I hadn’t met my partner twenty-five years before I was supposed to.”

Jay’s brows furrowed even further. “Kay?”

“I _met my partner twenty-five years before I was supposed to_ and my partner’s father died protecting me and I lied to my partner’s childhood self because I didn’t have a good answer for him about what happened. And then my partner came back and said it was fine, that it was in the past, that we could go on just like we always did. When I’d spent years waiting for this moment wondering how it would play out.”

It was probably the longest string of words Jay’d heard out of Kay’s mouth in all their years together. And it seemed like he wasn’t done, because he opened his mouth again, more words spat out.

“My partner forgave me even though I hadn’t asked for it and didn’t deserve it and wasn’t expecting it. And then he kept harping on me about it at every opportunity even though the only thing I ever wanted was to put it behind me. So yes. I _do_ mind that you want me to forget what you said.”

Jay swallowed, not a little frightened at what he might have unleashed here. “Kay, I—”

“You are a royal pain in my ass. You’ve been a royal pain in my ass for almost as long as you’ve been alive technically speaking.” Kay looked away, his eyes searching, confused, out the windshield. “I’d trade all that for your dad’s life back if I could, but I—I wouldn’t have had it any other way otherwise.” He cleared his throat, his cheeks going a little bit pink.

And Jay’s eyes weren’t watering, they _weren’t_. “Kay, I’m about to do something and I really need you to give me a head’s up if it’s gonna end with me getting punched in the mouth.” And then he grabbed the lapels of Kay’s suit, so familiar and yet he’d never knew what it felt like beneath his hand until now, never knew that it felt just that little bit different than his own. He’d thought Kay would fight him every inch of the way, but he came easily, pliant.

When he kissed Kay, his mouth remained a thin, craggy frown and that shouldn’t have been anything worth pursuing. Jay shouldn’t have liked it. Anyone in their right mind would have cut that shit short and moved on to greener pastures, be with people who took joy in life. But Jay wasn’t anyone and he’d long ago given up on shouldn’ts and he wouldn’t have had it any other way, not when it was Kay, who finally got with the picture and kissed him back.

If Jay had thought about it—he hadn’t, but if he had—he wouldn’t have expected the polite, almost chivalrous approach Kay took, like he wasn’t sure of himself or the situation, like he felt he should apologize, like it was a dream. He would have thought Kay would kiss big and mean and demanding. Grouchy even. Though Jay wasn’t sure what a grouchy kiss would even feel like…

This, though, this was nice, too, even with the sharp, unintended hint of teeth against his lips.

Jay shifted closer, or tried to. Cars weren’t what they used to be, built with bench seats meant for kissing, and he found himself losing in the battle against the gear shift. He groaned, the sound hitching high in his throat. If his body wasn’t so busy flooding with relief, the constant ache in his chest cracking loose and freeing him from its influence, he would’ve been embarrassed.

He wasn’t embarrassed.

How could he be when everything he’d wanted had fallen into his lap all at once?

Breaking the kiss, he laughed and shook his head. It still didn’t feel real; he was probably gonna go get the usual battery of post-field assignment tests done back at HQ just to make sure there wasn’t a parasite or a hallucinogen or something in his system, that’s how unreal it felt. “We gotta talk more often.”

“Yeah,” Kay said, dubious, eyes not quite able to meet Jay’s, too focused on Jay’s mouth. “Let’s not.”

Jay pulled him forward again, smothering giddy laughter because he still couldn’t believe this. “You know what? Never change, man.”

*

“So, Kay,” Jay said, ducking the spray of goo as he hit his mark, too fast for the Orithihaxan to get his own shot off. It didn’t work, of course, and he ended up spattered across the face and shoulders with it—maybe even more covered than if he’d just let it happen. Par for the course, really. He wasn’t sure why he even tried. Spitting at the ground, he scrubbed the back of his hand across his chin and mouth. “You gonna say it or do I gotta?”

“Say what?” Kay asked, eyes scanning the ground around them and the walls and out the windows of the small shop where they’d found the Orithahaxans. Shattered glass peppered the carpet and Kay stepped gingerly over it as he made a circuit of the room.

“You know. _It_.”

“It?” Kay peered at him, squinting a little, before turning away.

Jay huffed and picked his way over what remained of the Orithihaxan’s body. There… wasn’t much admittedly, but Jay didn’t want it sticking to the bottom of his shoe. “Yeah, you know. Hey, it’s been a while, thought maybe we could celebrate. Dinner, maybe. A couple of drinks. An exchange of… tokens… of… what are you doing?”

Kay was, in fact, merely standing in the far corner of the room, looking down, back to Jay, his hands on his hips. He breathed deeply, the inhale visible in the minute shift of his shoulders. “Happy anniversary, Slick. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Hell yeah,” Jay answered, striding the rest of the way forward. “I thought you’d forgotten.”

“No.” He shook his head and turned. “No, I didn’t.” If Jay wasn’t paying close attention, he might not have noticed Kay lifting his hand, the glint of metal balanced on his thumbnail, or the way he flicked said piece of metal at Jay. Jay might, in fact, have fumbled it or not caught it at all.

But when he looked down in his palm, he saw a gold band, plain, so painfully traditional Jay might’ve mocked Kay about it if there wasn’t something lodged in his throat.

“Can’t wear it to work, but uh. If you want…” Kay looked away, rubbed his palm over his elbow. “Happy anniversary, Slick.”

Jay grinned and purposefully did _not_ do any of the stupid shit he wanted to do. Like pull Kay forward into a hug. Or kiss him even though his face was covered in goo. Or post a picture to the Instagram account he didn’t have. No, instead he slipped the perfectly sized ring onto his finger with as little fanfare as possible—he could show Kay some courtesy every once in a while when he felt like it, let him think none of this was a big deal—and cracked his knuckles. “Happy anniversary, Old Guy.”


End file.
